know how it may be with other young persons, I never reason so well
myself as when I am angry.

"You call it a worthless letter," I said, "and yet you think it worth
preserving."

"Have you nothing more to say to me than that?" he asked.

"Nothing more," I answered.

He changed again. After having looked unaccountably angry, he now looked
unaccountably relieved.

"I will soon satisfy you," he said, "that I have a good reason for
preserving a worthless letter. Miss Chance, my dear, is not a woman to
be trusted. If she saw her advantage in making a bad use of my reply,
I am afraid she would not hesitate to do it. Even if she is no longer
living, I don't know into what vile hands my letter may not have fallen,
or how it might be falsified for some wicked purpose. Do you see now how
a correspondence may become accidentally important, though it is of no
value in itself?"

I could say "Yes" to this with a safe conscience.

But there were some perplexities still left in my mind. It seemed
strange that Miss Chance should (apparently) have submitted to the
severity of my father's reply. "I should have thought," I said to him,
"that she would have sent you another impudent letter--or perhaps have
insisted on seeing you, and using her tongue instead of her pen."

"She could do neither the one nor the other, Helena. Miss Chance will
never find out my address again; I have taken good care of that."

He spoke in a loud voice, with a flushed face--as if it was quite a
triumph to have prevented this woman from discovering his address. What
reason could he have for being so anxious to keep her away from him?
Could I venture to conclude that there was a mystery in the life of a
man so blameless, so truly pious? It shocked one even to think of it.

There was a silence between us, to which the housemaid offered a welcome
interruption. Dinner was ready.

He kissed me before we left the room. "One word more, Helena," he said,
"and I have done. Let there be no more talk between us about Elizabeth
Chance."

CHAPTER XVII. HELENA'S DIARY.

Miss Jillgall joined us at the dinner-table, in a state of excitement,
carrying a book in her hand.

I am inclined, on reflection, to suspect that she is quite clever enough
to have discovered that I hate her--and that many of the aggravating
things she says and does are assumed, out of retaliation, for the
purpose of making me angry. That ugly face is a double face, or I am
much mistaken